Technology

Throughout the creation of my magazine I have been using several pieces of technology to help me achieve my end product. In the next slides you will see all the different products and software I have used during this process.

IMacs I have used the Apple Macs during this process as these are the computers we use during lessons. However as we only have nine we have to take turns and share as there are more than nine students – this is a bit of a pain! At first I found these very confusing to use as they are not something I normally use, however I just kept experimenting with them and I now have the just on how they work. The macs come in very useful as they have different software to Microsoft meaning you end up with a different layout than if you use Microsoft’s. In the next few slides I will tell you about the software I use when I am working on the mac.

Sony Laptop

When I’m at home, I use this laptop to edit pictures for my blog, add or change posts and do other research for my magazine. I find this much easier to handle and use compared to Macs as well as it being much easier to work on. Seeing as I’m so used to using this laptop I get the work done quicker. The only disadvantage of using this laptop is that the screen is much smaller and it doesn’t have the same software as the mac meaning I either have to produce work on this or on the mac considering the files are different

Lumix camera For the preliminary task I used

my own camera to take pictures of the model. This was good as I knew exactly how the camera works and it is also a good 14 megapixel camera and allows you to change the contrast and brightness or the camera to suit the time of day. When I took the recce photos, I used the schools own camera (not the professional one) however it ran out of batteries and the screen didn’t work; this resulted me to just taking pictures on my phone to save

Nikon camer

When taking the photos for the magazine cover, contents and double page spread, I used the art department’s camera. I’m unsure of the specific name and model however it looked exactly the same as the image next to this text! I found that this camera was brilliant to work with and produced excellent quality images. Of course this also took a little bit of time to get used to.

1001 fonts When it came to choosing the

font for my text it took ages because I am really fussy and want to get the right font to match with the genre of my magazine – pop! I came across this site from word of mouth and it supplied me with a wide range of fonts to choose from. All you had to do was download them onto the computer – it’s as easy as that! I think the majority of the fonts on this website are much better than the ones that the computer software supplies.

Pages / Iphoto

Serif Draw Plus

Both of these software’s are supplied by the macs. Pages is similar to Microsoft Word in the sense that you can design posters/banners etc on it. I found this easy to use once I played around with it however still don’t understand how you do some things on it. I think for creating my magazine documents Microsoft Publisher would be best! Iphoto is the photo editor which is one the mac. It is very similar to others in the sense that you can change the contrast and colours on a picture however it takes a lot of getting used to.

Desktop Publisher

After looking at several photo editor sites, such as Photoshop, Iphoto, and Picnik I finally came across this to help me get a white background! This is the software I used when I edited the background from my front cover image. Seeing as I have only used this once before I wasn’t sure on how to work it - therefore had to ask for help! Once I knew how to work it I experimented cutting the image out from the background. The images are still a bit edgy and need tiding up for my final cover – I will have to practise a bit more!

Blogger For our task we were asked to blog and post all of our work onto this website. I find this

I found that creating my front cover was so much easier on a normal publishing site such as Microsoft Office Publisher. I felt these were easier to use as I have grown up using it so I have a lot of knowledge on how to use it and I found that it was easier to move text and pictures around on it so that they weren’t disappearing once you overlapped it with something else.

Picnik

For our task we were asked to blog and post all of our work onto this website. I find this

As we had to take photos for our magazine I thought it would be a good idea to edit them. I have been using Picnik as my main photo editor seeing as it has several features which can

As we had to take photos for our magazine I thought it would be a good idea to edit them. I have been using Picnik as my main photo editor seeing as it has several features which can

Slideshare Throughout my blog I have been using a website called Slideshare which presents your work in an easy to read presentation. This just combines the work you’ve done together in a slideshow so it’s all in one place. The equivalent to this is ‘Keynote’ but you can only access that on the macs. The only problem I had with this what not knowing how to upload a ‘slideshare’ onto my blog. In the end I had to Google the answer as the

Google Throughout the process I will be using Google a lot. This is my main search engine as I feel that it is quick and efficient and supplies me with the best information for what I am looking for. I will be using Google to be getting on to my blog as well as for finding pictures, artists, examples of magazines and for independent research.

When it came to taking the pictures for the magazine, I chose to place my model on the stage in the place. I chose to do it in this place because it has a white backdrop at the back and has several lights surrounding it. The main colour lighting is obviously clear, and then blue, red and green. The only skills we had to learn were which switches to turn on for certain lights and how to turn the whole lot on and off. A problem that occurred during this was that the lighting was not shining on the area in which I wanted the model to stand.

Lighting